


Reverberations

by straight_up_gay



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (c'mon let's be real when have I ever written anything that WASN'T a character study), Cassian Andor deserves a nice peaceful afterlife, Character Study, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Finn, I'm still sobbing over Finn and Bodhi bye, Leia Organa's Complicated Feelings about the Force, lord help me I'm back on my bullshit, making up shit about Force Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 13:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12299754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straight_up_gay/pseuds/straight_up_gay
Summary: "A man isn't dead while his name is still spoken." - Terry Pratchett(and those who die nameless aren't dead while their legacy still lives)





	Reverberations

i.

No matter what the other kids say, Poe Dameron knows that his mom was right and angels do exist. He knows it because there's an angel watching over the kids of the Rebellion. 

The minders take good care of them when their parents aren't there, but sometimes, kids still get into danger. Or, they would if the angel wasn't there. Last month, Selvie had almost eaten the red berries off a tree before the angel had whispered in her ear, and Poe had learned later from one of the minders that they were poison. A few cycles ago, Allu'lynne had nearly stepped into an old disguised trap before the angel had shouted in the distance, distracting her. And today, Telvik had just about chased a ball onto a field that turned out, five seconds later, to be mined with old flashbangs. But the angel had whispered to them not to do it, and so the flashbang's explosion had only blown up the ball. 

The angel is watching the other children leave. He hasn't noticed Poe, yet, hiding behind one of the trees. 

Poe’s a little shy around the stranger, but he's chickened out on talking to him enough times before. 

Hello," he says, stepping out from behind the trees. "Thanks for saving Telvik. He’s dumb sometimes, but I’d be sad if he died."

The angel jerks to the side, looking at him all puzzled. Up close, he has big, sad, pretty eyes, a little like how Uncle Luke's go sometimes. But, unlike Uncle Luke, he has a beard.

"Hello," the angel says back, waving like he isn't really sure how to.

He seems almost shy, but Poe has a lot of experience talking to shy people. He grins and waves back enthusiastically, to let the angel know he wants to be friends. "I'm Poe Dameron. I've never met an angel before. I didn't even know you lived on planets sometimes."

In Shara Bey's stories, angels would show up to pilots on really, really long missions, or missions where they were hurt or scared. It had always made him less scared for her, knowing that there were angels watching over her. That she was protected.

The angel gives him a funny smile, but his eyes still look sad. "Is that what you think I am? An angel?" 

Poe can't help but squint at him, even if that's rude. "Of course you are. How come else you're watching out for us and no one else can see you?" 

The angel seems awkward with him, like some of the soldiers who aren't used to talking to kids. "You shouldn't be able to see me, either. I wonder why you can?" 

Poe beams. "Uncle Luke always says I've got sharp eyes, and I'll be a good pilot some day." He stops, not wanting to say something that's not quite true. "Well, Luke's not my _uncle_ uncle. He's my mom's friend." He swallows around the sudden sharp feeling in his throat, and says, "I have a lot of uncles and aunts, but I think Uncle Luke is my favourite."

The angel looks all still in the face. "I think I might know why you can see me, Poe Dameron. Did someone you love die?" 

And now Poe knows the angel really isn't used to being around kids, because grown-ups never talk to kids that way. They say things like "passed away" and "became one with the Force" and leave big, awkward pauses in the middle of their sentences, but they never say "died." 

He nodded. "My mom. Shara Bey." And his eyes are welling up again, like they haven't since the ceremony, and the angel looks concerned. 

Poe interrupts before he can say anything about how sorry he is or how she's so happy now that she's one with the Force.

"She told me all about angels. Have you met her yet? She's really nice, and she's got hair like yours but even longer, and she wears an orange suit." For a panicky moment, he can't remember anything else about her, but then he thinks about the last picnic they had together. "And she laughs a lot, and swears when she thinks I can't hear her, and she wears a necklace with a ring on it. It’s my dad’s." 

The angel smiles, faintly. "I haven't yet," he says, "But I'll tell you when I do, okay?" 

Poe nods, sniffling up the rest of his tears. "You don't need to pinky swear. Shara Bey told me angels always tell the truth." 

He has a big, nice smile when he really smiles, and it even makes his eyes look less sad. "All right, Poe Dameron. I promise I'll tell you if I see your mother." 

If an angel was going to visit him, Poe secretly wishes it had been his mother. But it doesn't seem nice to tell this angel that. Besides, he's the best angel Poe could think of, other than Shara Bey

*** 

Over the next few months, Poe sees him again and again, whispering in the ears of pilots, making the droids chirp with laughter, sitting on a pyramid or under a tree. But most of the time, he's just watching over the kids, their laughter faintly reflected in his smile. 

Poe waves to him when he sees him, and sometimes, the angel waves back. The other kids think it's weird, of course, him waving at nobody. But then again, Poe also pets the droids and says "please" and "thank you" to the automatic doors, so no one really questions it too much. 

One day, he asks the angel, "Why can't people see you? My mom," and now he can say it without swallowing more than a little bit, "said that only pilots could see angels, but I'm not a pilot yet." He scowls, a little. "Even if I wish I was."

"What?" the angel asks.

Poe doesn't talk about this with any of the minders any more, because they all treat him like he's some dumb kid. "I know I'm still little, but I can do stuff, I'm not scared." He folds his arms across his chest, waiting for the angel to rebuke him. "Uncle Luke was flying speeders when he was almost as little as me! And I want to help!"

He looks defiantly back at the angel, expecting a brush-off or a pat on the head or some stupid adulty response.

He doesn't expect the angel's eyes to fill up with tears.

For a moment, neither of them can find anything good to say, and Poe worries he's broken something in the angel, done something wrong.

"Poe Dameron," he says, and Poe notices to his shock that. "You'll make a good pilot some day. You're brave, and you're kind and good. Will you make me a promise?" 

Poe nods, rapidly. "I'll even pinky-promise!" 

The angel laughs through his tears. "Oh, no, I trust you. Just hold onto that kindness as long as possible, okay?" 

Poe nods again, resolutely. He doesn't know why the angel's asking him to do something so easy. 

But Poe Dameron always keeps his promises. Shara Bey had taught him that much. 

 

ii. 

Rey twirls her staff through the air, trying to put more power behind the blows. It's harder because, as she's increasingly aware, she's hungry. 

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If she couldn't defend the stuff she found better, then she didn't deserve to have it. And if she didn't deserve to have it, she didn't deserve the portions it would have brought her, either. 

Her stomach growls in response.

In frustration, she stabs at the ground, opening a sizeable hole in the sand. But the movement only makes her arms weaker, the big pit in her stomach open wider.

"Your movements are good," a voice from behind her said. "But you need a better base for them." 

She whips herself around, landing solidly on her feet, despite the hunger. He’s an old man, or at least older than most of the people on Jakku, and he looks like maybe he’s blind. He's got a quarterstaff, longer than hers, and a weapon on her back she can't get a very good look at. Close-cropped hair, but his clothing's loose enough that she could probably get a handhold if she needed to in a fight.

"Who are you?" she asks, drawing herself up taller as she does. Sometimes, when she makes herself tall enough and her voice big enough, she can make people go away by just talking to them.

"I'm tired," the other man cheerfully announces, sitting down on a rock. "And who are you?" 

"I'm nobody," Rey says. The old man makes her eyes go prickly and itchy, like the blue ghost people she sees sometimes in the marketplace.

"Nobody's nobody," the old man says, grinning widely. The smile worries Rey; nobody on Jakku smiles for no reason."You're living, still. Living people have names." 

"You're not?" Rey asks. She isn't frightened of the dead, not like some of the other scavengers are. She can go into the wrecks that have the dried-up bodies of Stormtroopers because she isn't scared of them. 

It's the living she doesn’t trust.

"No, I'm not," he says, stretching out his arms over his head, drawing a series of cracks from his joints. 

"You don't sound dead," Rey says, suspiciously. 

The old man lets out an offended noise, putting a palm to his chest. "You don't trust me? I'm an old, blind monk!" 

Rey doesn't know what a monk is, but she's too embarrassed to admit that. Instead, she says, "That doesn't mean you aren't dangerous." 

She has her staff loose in her hand, in case she has to swing. 

The man laughs, eyes crinkling. "Good. You're already smarter than most Stormtroopers." He tilts his head to one side. "I can tell you're very good at knowing things about people. Do you think I'm dangerous?"

Rey is good at knowing things about people. She knew not to trust Jafferty even before he kidnapped Teega and Jenness, and she knows that as lousy as Unkar Platt is, he won't actually steal from her.

Looking at him with her second set of eyes, as she calls it, he's dangerous but not scary. Something like the lightning storms that sweep through Jakku in the rainy season, something to watch out for but not a threat to her. 

Cautiously, Rey moves closer, still far enough away that she can bolt if she needs to. 

"How can you tell I'm standing wrong if you can't see?"

The old man smiles. "The sand shifts under your feet when you swing. If you were properly grounded, it wouldn't." 

“Oh,” Rey says, feeling embarrassed. “How do I do that?”

He stands up, holding his staff in front of him, feet shoulder-width apart. “You need to center yourself in the Force.”

“The Force,” Rey says, deadpan. She's heard some of the merchants talk about the Force, how it flows through things and binds them together, making the impossible possible. But it sounds too good to exist, and definitely too good to exist on Jakku.

"Yes," he says, smiling. “Sometimes, it helps to pay attention to your breathing.”

He breathes in, long and slow, eyes closed, then breathes out. After a few of those, she cautiously copies him, though she can’t make her inhales as long as his.

Feeling her breaths go through her whole body feels funny, but it does make things feel a little clearer, somehow. She wiggles one foot out toward her shoulder, stopping when she feels less wobbly on her feet.

He says something under his breath about the Force, but she doesn't ask him to repeat it. She feels silly enough already trying to listen to it.

“Now what?” she asks.

He twirls his staff through the air, fast enough she can feel the breeze from it. “Well, when you start off centered in the Force, it makes it easier to work through things. Like being exhausted, or being starving.”

Rey scrambles back. "How d'you know I'm hungry?" she asks. She doesn't like the idea of the ghost knowing things about her. Or anyone knowing things about her, really. It doesn’t feel safe.

The ghost drops the point of his staff to the sand, looking worn-out in a way that Rey doesn't understand, even with her second eyes. "You're very young to be this old."

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s not used to adults feeling sad at her like that. So she tilts her chin up and says, "Well, you're really old to believe in fairy stories.”

He laughs, and the sadness on his face goes away for a moment. "Oh, you’re never too old for that,” he says. "If we don't believe in things, then how can we help them happen?"

She doesn’t have anything to say to that, so she practices a swing, breathing in and out. It feels stronger than before.

"Good," he says. "Now try it a few more times."

***

She's more than halfway home though the sand by the time she notices she isn't hungry any more.

 

iii.

The Force flows through every living thing, and droids aren't living. So there is no way the KX-series security droid is a ghost. 

The KX (and it's funny that one still exists, weren't they destroyed with the Empire?) stoops to talk to the astromech, who is burbling away in binary.

"You're looking for who?" he asks. 

The astromech chirps and spits out a cloud of dust from its front port, obviously struggling with the sand. It’s a strange place for two droids to meet, out in the unforgiving desert. Stranger that the KX doesn’t sink into the sand. or even leave footprints

"Oh, good,” the KX responds, throwing his arms up in the air. "Well, if I meet someone who goes by the name 'friend,' I'll be sure to let you know!”

The chirping goes higher and more frantic, and the BB unit accentuates it with a series of wobbles and rolls. The KX unit sighs. Droids don’t have the programming to sound world-weary, but he seems to manage it anyways.

"So, you're saying he's being chased by a lot of "bad men", as you put it, and he's only got one blaster, and you think he's still alive?" 

This time, it's more whirring than chirping. Even someone who doesn't know binary could recognize the indignation.

The taller droid gives a heavy sigh. "Look, I know he's special. But special people die too. It's what people are good at." 

In response, the astromech rolls away, faster than they had been going before. 

"Look, why don't you just forget about him and find a nice place to rest until it's dark? Nothing good comes out of caring about people too much!”

The smaller droid tosses off a series of loud clicks, and the KX winces. "Did your motherboard teach you that language?" he yells after them.

There’s no response, except for the sound of metal rolling against sand from far off.

Droids can't smile. Their faces just aren’t made for that. So the change that passes over the KX unit's face at the sight of the smaller droid rolling away must be a trick of the light, nothing more. 

 

iv)

_I won't, I won't, I won't._

Finn’s mouth is too dry to say the words out loud, but they echo in his head like a blaster dropped on a durasteel floor. I for the right foot and won’t for the left foot.

There's a sand dune up ahead of him that casts a shadow long enough for him to sit in, and he shambles gratefully toward it, lungs heaving. But no, he remembers, he can't rest, he can't fall. Whatever he does, whatever he's feeling, he needs to get as far away from Them as possible, because if They find him, they'll do worse than hurt him. 

He shakes himself. If he’s smart, if he keeps moving, they’ll never catch him, they’ll never be able to make him do anything for them. 

_I won't, I won't, I won't._

The Captain had taught them how long a person could go without water, and Finn's sure he hasn't been in the desert for that long. But his mouth feels sandblasted, and his eyes are swimming, and his head feels like it's stuffed with insulation. 

Maybe that's why he misses the rock in front of him. 

Finn stumbles over a rock, and he cries out at the sharp pain through his foot. His landing is at least soft, but that doesn't help if he's broken his toe, and he'll never be able to run away, and they'll recondition him and - 

"Finn," a voice says, from in front of him, and he looks up. There's a pair of white boots in front of him, another trooper. But why, how, is the other trooper calling him Finn? 

"Yes," he says, spitting out sand. "I'm Finn. I’m Finn." 

He stands up shakily, legs wobbling. Now that he's looking at the other trooper, his outline is faint and blue, almost like a holo. Finn's seen people like that when his trooper company has passed through old ruins, sad bright people in robes who give when a trooper passes through them. 

The trooper steps backward two steps, and Finn has to take two steps forward. Looking at him makes his eyes itch. He tries to look for troop identification, but, it just makes his head swim.

"What do you want from me?" he asks. "And who are you?" 

The trooper laughs. "I'll tell you who I am," he says, stepping backward again. But first of all, I need you to do me a favour." 

"What?" Finn says, feeling his eyelids dragged down by the heat and the sand. He's never been this tired in his life before, not even the time his squad was on 72-hour detail and Slip almost fainted off a platform. 

The strange trooper takes another step backwards, forcing Finn to follow him, and pulls out a sabacc pack. "Let me read your fortune for you." 

He's tricking him. Or he's in reconditioning, somehow, and this is another one of their strategies to make him lose his grip on himself. Or he's dead, and this is the hell they keep for Soldiers Who Don't Follow Orders. 

But the other trooper is calling him Finn. 

"Sure," he says, and stumbles sluggishly forward.

The sabacc pack isn't like the ones officers carry, all grey and red. As he shuffles them, Finn can see the edges of bright, jewel-like designs on them; a skull covered in swirling patterns, an orange-red flame, a man carrying a purple sword against an impossibly blue sky. 

What kind of trooper _is_ this man? 

"Traditionally, you're supposed to pick six cards, but the first one's the most important, anyway. Pick a card," says the other trooper, gloved hands skimming through the deck, and he takes a few steps back so Finn has to follow him to do it. 

"That one," says Finn, pointing at a card like all the others. But it feels good to choose, still.

The other trooper picks it out of the deck, turning it around to show him. 

It's a man in black robes, hanging upside down. He has a look of intense concentration on his face, almost serene despite his position. 

"What card is it, Finn?" 

It takes Finn a moment to recognize it; the card's different from any of the others he's seen before. But then he notices the -8 value in the top corner, and rasps out, "Endurance." 

"Yes!" The other trooper says, with delight evident in his voice, even through his helmet. "Endurance, or as we called it back home, the Hanged Man. It means a crossroads, a choice, the ability to withstand current challenges." Finn swears he can hear the other trooper smiling. "It means rebirth.”

Finn isn’t sure whether he heard what he thought he heard, because what he thought he heard is treason. Or at least has the same smell as treason.

But he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about treason or Being A Good Soldier or any of that, he doesn’t care, and the words make him hungry in a way that has nothing to do with rations.

“Who are you?” Finn asks. “You’re not a trooper. You can’t be.”

"You got me," the other man says. "I wouldn't have been a very good one, anyways. I was never very good at listening to orders." 

He straps off his gloves to show real, human hands, then pulls his helmet off.

And there's no way he's a trooper, because his hair is way longer than regulation and he's wearing some kind of scrap-metal goggles and he's beaming at Finn, smiling with his eyes and his mouth. 

Troopers don't smile at traitors like that. 

"It's good to see you with my own eyes, Finn," the other man says, and Finn doesn't understand the look in his eyes. He's been trained to spot more than thirty expressions on the faces of civilians, but this isn't any of them. It's like the look Captain gives him, sometimes, when he finishes a successful drill, but so much brighter and so much more. 

"Who are you?" he asks again, wanting to know more about this strange not-a-trooper with the eyes that make him feel like overflowing. 

"Fair's fair," he says, and says a name Finn can't quite catch. But he's real, he has a name like real people do, so the look he's giving Finn must be real somehow too. 

"You're doing so well," the other man says, smiling at him. "I'm so proud of you," and Finn can see him start to fade around the edges, so he desperately tries to memorize those eyes, remember the sharp happysad things they make him feel. 

When the other man fades away completely, Finn can see buildings on the edge of his vision. He laughs, his throat no longer so dry. The other man must have led him here.

He blinks, slowly, to burn the eyes onto the basks of his retinas, and then keeps walking.

_I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't._

 

v)

Han’s trying to get to the Falcon, but some damn kid’s blocking his way.

“Hey, do you mind?” he asks, trying to shift around her with an arm full of flashbangs.

“Han Solo, right?” she says, cooly, leaning across the doorway. He can’t read her eyes.

“That’s my name,” he says, and tries to sidle around her. But she puts out an arm across the doorway, and he’s not going to push a kid out of the way, no matter how annoying she is. “Unless I owe you money. Then, I’m someone else.”

She's so young. It didn't seem fair that the Resistance took people that young, barely out of childhood. Oh, sure, war is cruel and doesn’t wait for birthdays, but she looked to him like she should still be at home, irritating the shit out of her parents.

“And you’re on the mission to Starkiller Base.” 

This one isn’t a question. The one before it hadn’t really been a question, either. 

“Yeah, I’m going there now. Or, I’m trying to.” He glares at her meaningfully.

She smiles, grimly. “What do you think the odds are you’ll make it back?”

For a moment, Han’s too stunned to even be outraged. “Well, no offense, but it’s a straight rescue mission. Go in, get the kid, come out. I’ve been flying them since before you were born.”

She laughs again, a secret, private laugh. “A rescue mission,” she repeats. “But who are you rescuing? And why?”

“The kid, Rey, obviously.” 

Like most of the things he says nowadays, this is only part true. And, damn her, she seems to know that. She cocks an eyebrow at him.

“What’s the point in lying?” she asks. “It makes both of us look stupid. Why else are you going there?”

He doesn’t have anything to say. Oh, he could make up a thousand excuses for why he’s doing it, a thousand stories that didn’t have his son’s name in it, that didn’t contain the words _I have to try._

It’s a moment before he realizes he’s said those last words out loud. 

She laughs, but she’s not laughing at him, and it’s sad. Her face looks all wrong, old skin stretched over a young person’s face. “That’s how they get us, isn’t it? Doing the right thing. Even if we know it’s going to kill us.”

“We’ll save her just fine,” he manages, and he can tell by the look on her face that she knows what he means.

She gives him a humourless, wan smile, but one with real affection in it. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t tell you the odds.”

She doesn’t need to. He knows them well enough already. That was why he’d given Finn such detailed instructions on how to pilot the Falcon, why he’d let Chewie keep the bowcaster, why he’d held Leia so tenderly, for so long.

Jedi Killer, they call him, Snoke’s Red Right Hand, The Walking Darkness. There’s no room left for a person inside those titles, no room left for someone with a beating heart. _I have to try, even if…_

“Make sure someone looks after the General for me. She’s always testy without me to fight with.”

She nods, eyes calm and sad. “He’s lucky to have you,” she says.

He doesn’t bother to correct her.

She's young, so young, younger even than Ben had been. Does war get younger every generation, or is that just the price of being alive too long, watching the soldiers around him get painfully young? 

"Han," Finn calls, from up ahead somewhere. "Mr. Solo." 

The kid moves to the side, giving him space to get through the door, and winks

Han takes a deep breath, and keeps moving forward. Someone's gotta keep these dumb kids out of trouble.

 

vi)

_Jaw firm, eyes steady, hands in your pockets so no one can see they’re balled in fists. ___

__It’s been more than a quarter-century since Bail Organa last said those words to her, but whenever Leia is angry in public, she still hears them in her head. So she keeps it together walking through the Resistance base, even nodding to pilots and soldiers as she passes them._ _

___Jaw firm, eyes steady._ She’d practiced it on her own in the mirror, when she was very young, trying to get her calm face to look like Bail’s._ _

__The thought of Bail makes her depressed. If the New Republic’d had anyone with half of his political talent, things might not have gone this way._ _

__It’s a relief to get out to the further airfields, nobody around but the tassels of the tall, waving grass. She can let her breath out, stop schooling her face into something befitting a general. But she still keeps her teeth clenched, almost afraid to let her jaw relax._ _

__The airfield isn’t quite empty, she notices. There’s someone else out there, a human man lying serenely in the grass, with a pack next to him._ _

__Leia lets out a little hiss of breath between her teeth, and walks up to him._ _

__"No," she says, loud enough to wake him up even if he really is sleeping. “No, you’re not allowed here.”_ _

__Slowly, unwillingly, he opens his eyes, looking up at her._ _

__"You know how they say that you can sleep when you're dead? Well, I'm dead, and I'd like to sleep."_ _

__He closes his eyes again._ _

__Leia knows he's dead because of the blue halo around him, the way he makes her eyes prickly. He's one of her brother's damn ghosts._ _

__"If you're looking for the Skywalker, I'm not the right one."_ _

__She could have said she wasn't a Skywalker at all, that being Luke’s sister doesn’t make her part of that damn family, but she’s given up trying to make people understand._ _

__Especially the ghosts, who used to crowd around her hungrily, asking her to talk to them, listen to them, reach out into the Force._ _

__“Go find him, if you want to talk to one of us so badly. The Resistance doesn’t need any more damn ghosts.”_ _

__The ghost stands up, thick braids swinging as he moves. Ever since, well, ever since the first Death Star, she’s made it a point to learn the hairstyles of the different planets. Alderaan’s complicated braiding system is locked in her memory, but she always worries that other traditions will be lost, somehow, subject to the same careless cruelty._ _

__It's absurd. Or, it had been absurd until a few days ago, until Starkiller._ _

__The ghost looks at her evenly, and says, “You’re angry.”_ _

__Oh, and isn’t that just another blast from the past, another one of those ghosts telling her that she has _much anger in her_. She grinds her teeth together, as hard as she can, because it's the only way to keep from screaming. _ _

__Yes! It’s true! She’s angry, angry at every stupid politician who’d said the First Order wasn’t a credible threat while drinking tea in their stupid senate chairs, angry at those jackbooted war reenactors with no idea, _no idea_ what it had been like to live under the brutal weight of empire, angry at Han for listening to her for once in his damn life at exactly the wrong time, angry, furious at her son, and herself, because she’d brought him to every last monument to Alderaan’s passing and somehow that hadn’t been enough. Angry at good, kind Poe Dameron because he’d said _may the Force be with you_ as a kindness and she’d almost slapped him, because the Force had always been with the Skywalker family, for all the fucking good it had ever done them. _ _

__She draws herself up to her full height. “If you’re about to tell me that anger is the path to the Dark Side or any bantha shit like that, I will throw my datapad at you, ghost or no ghost.”_ _

__She expects him to be stern, sorrowful. Instead, he laughs._ _

__“What do I look like,” he asks, between gasps, “some kind of Jedi?”_ _

__She looks him over. Luke’s ghosts had always looked solemn, dignified, grand. He mostly just looks tired._ _

__“No,” she concedes._ _

__The ghost works a kink out of his neck, wincing. “I studied the Jedi when I was younger. They had a lot to say about anger. I could even quote them, if you really wanted.”_ _

__“No thank you,” Leia says. “I’ve heard enough of it.”_ _

__He smiles, wryly. “Three hundred datacrons filled with their writings about anger, and still none of it’s worth anything when your home is lying in ruins around you.”_ _

__Leia bites down on the inside of her lower lip, hard. Her planet, her son, the Republic she’d carried to term like a child, Han. How many times can one person bleed, she wonders, before there’s no blood left in them?_ _

__"I always thought that was why they hid, after the war. You can't live in an unfair world without being angry." He shrugs. "Otherwise, you'll die."_ _

__He isn't one of Alderaan’s ghosts. The braids are wrong, too rough, wrapped in leather instead of thin steelsilk. But he has the same kind of grief stamped into his face._ _

__"So what do we do, then?" she asks, flatly. Her knees hurt and her eyesight is going, and she always thought that she'd have more to show for getting old._ _

__The ghost laughs, quietly. "We always used to say, in my city, that what doesn't kill you doesn't kill you."_ _

__Leia tilts her head to the side. "Isn't it, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger?""_ _

__The ghost winces. "If I ever say that version to anyone, may the Force strike me where I stand." Leia laughs. "But, no, if it hasn't killed you, then it hasn't killed you, and you're alive to do something about it."_ _

__They sit in silence again, Leia thinking over his words._ _

__"So you mean, we just have to keep going? Just dragging ourselves back into the fight?" She's tired, more tired than she’s ever been in her life, but she thinks that she can keep putting one foot in front of the other, if that's what the ghost asks of her._ _

__The ghost laughs again, bitterly but with no edge. "I wish I had something better."_ _

__Leia shakes her head. "I don't think anyone does."_ _

__Already, in her head, she can see the blueprints of another plan. That’s what you do after catastrophe, she knows, survey the ruins to look for what you can salvage, whatever weapons you can use to keep fighting. That’s another thing Bail Organa had taught her._ _

__The ghost shoulders his pack, looking as though he’s about to leave. Then, he stops himself, turning back to her. "I saw your father, once, before I died."_ _

__Leia looks down, tired more than angry this time. "My father saw a lot of people before they died," she says, bitterly. "That was sort of his job, seeing people before they died."_ _

__Maybe she’d have been more inclined to talk to ghosts if her first one hadn’t been a sandy-haired man vomiting up apologies she neither wanted nor could accept._ _

__The ghost snorts. "No, not _him_. The real one."_ _

__Leia blinks._ _

__“On Yavin Four. I knew you were his daughter when I saw you. You have the same face.”_ _

__She has to look down, again, so her eyes don’t well up. She'll never look like Bail Organa, no matter how many childhood nights she spent asking the Force to look like her adoptive parents. But she knows that isn't really what the ghost means._ _

__When she looks up, the ghost is smiling wryly. "Good luck, sister," he says, before fading into the blue of the sky._ _

__She straightens up, squaring her shoulders even though her knees ache. There's work to be done._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm too tired to write a proper endnote right now. Sorry for the suffering, y'all.


End file.
